Meditation is a powerful tool you can use to bolster your win rate. It's just one of the many strategies you can employ off the tables to help you during play. Learn how and why a regular meditation practice will help your game.

Meditation calms the mind, clears your senses and prepares you to focus. The myriad of benefits from meditation are almost countless: increased concentration, emotional balance, increased creativity, decreased stress and anxiety, better memory and more. All of these are great for your poker game.

In order to gain the many benefits of meditation, you need to make it a routine. Starting with just a couple minutes a day can begin to show you results fairly quickly. Especially when starting out, people become frustrated that they can’t just ‘clear my mind already!’ This is part of the process, don’t let it get you upset, just breathe and relax. Frequency is more important than quantity. If your options were: 1 weekly session for 90 minutes or 1 daily session for 5 minutes, the daily session will yield much more benefit.

Find the right location for meditation. A quiet place void of distractions is the ideal setting for meditation. Make yourself comfortable, sitting with your spine straight. Good posture will help you have good circulation. If you find sitting uncomfortable, lie down, the point is to relax your body.

Start simply, take deep, cleansing breaths and focus on your breathing. Many people choose a “mantra” to repeat, either aloud or internally, to give the mind something to focus on. It can be as simple as the ever classic “ommm” or any sentence. ‘I am at peace’, ‘I am a winner’. The point of a mantra is to give yourself something to focus on so your mind won’t wander into worry or randomness.

As long as you are relaxing your body and trying to clear your mind, you’re doing it right. If you would prefer guided meditation, there are an abundance of resources on the internet, especially Youtube. Beginning a meditation regimen will help you improve your poker game and your life so you can Get Stackin’!